


murmurings of shell and bone

by lady_peony



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 17:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12939960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: Apply enough heat, and watch.





	murmurings of shell and bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Filigranka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/gifts).



The wind licks through the grasses at his feet, whispering over his neck. Seiji looks up.

Early summer. Yet still, the wind from the east had been. Cold.

He rests one finger against his bowstring. Plucks it once. He stands then, moves with purpose. Towards where the wind had blown.

The path is rocky, but otherwise stable. A few birds call to each other from unseen roosts, the sound somehow forlorn. He stills when he sees the tracks. _One, two, three._ Steps forward, step by step, matching each track.

_Four, five, six._ Another set.

His head jerks up at a sound. A sharp crack, like a spark flaring in a brazier. 

Seij runs.

The wind runs faster. Grass blades and dust dash towards his face. He holds a hand over his eyes, squints. A boulder, there.

Good for cover. Seiji darts towards it. Its short enough still, to let him peer out over the top.

_Shuuichi?_

Yes. That is him. Among the crags, there, perhaps thirty or twenty steps below the tall slope that Seiji is standing on.

Shuuichi has his back hunched against another boulder. His head tips up, to take a breath. His glasses are askew.

Something's odd. 

Shuuichi's hand. The left one. Held up, the fingers curled in. Unarmed, neither with the familiar slips of paper, or the dull glowing clay of a sealing pot. 

A flash of movement. A paper charm, there, in Shuuichi's right hand. He's not moving forward, but backing away. 

There are other rocks behind him, the rock formations making a sort of miniature maze, to Seiji's eyes.

Shuuichi has inched away from the first rock. Ducked behind another one.

The wind Seiji had felt before turns from cold to slicing. Seiji's ears are ringing. He looks down to the left, despite the wind. A gray youkai. 

It doesn't look dangerous. One-legged, short. Maybe half of Seiji's height, if even that.

No, not just that. It's one-legged. One-eyed? 

A yamajijii.

It hops towards Shuuichi, the leap surprisingly agile for its appearance. Pebbles fly up from the earth, then fall again, shaking. "Run on home, little exorcist!" Its laugh grates, like rocks scraping against each other. "Don't run quick enough, I may have you for supper!"

It leaps again. Each step thuds heavily, leaving a visible impression on the earth, even from the height Seiji is standing on. It grins, the teeth sharp.

Its teeth are strong enough to crush the bones of a wild boar. Or a wolf, even, Seiji remembers. 

Shuuichi's face had darkened at the youkai's words. But he kept moving back. A retreat. Not quick enough. This would be the youkai's territory, and it would know the terrain of it, every rock and speck and creeping bug.

Seiji stands up, away from his cover. Lifts his bow.

Shoots.

The youkai screams. 

Seiji manuevers himself down the slope. Lands. Another arrow already between his fingers.

The bow is not a weapon that kills quickly. Its meant to make its prey bleed.

"Seiji!"

He doesn't turn, hears pebbles move under Shuuichi's rushed steps. "Hello, Shuuichi-san. There's something I need to finish, here."

"Ha! Ha, ha!" From where the youkai had fallen, it somehow had sat itself up. An arrow, sticks out clearly from its one knee. Its large eye, the larger of its two, focuses on Seiji. "Shuuichi-san, is it? What use is he? What use is Shuuichi-san, to a Matoba? Ha!"

Irritating. The mindreaders were always so.

Seiji makes a decision. Drops his hand from the quiver down to his hip, flicks out the paper scroll at the youkai, a binding charm already whispered into its fibers.

The youkai laughs, once more, vanishes into a swirl of light and wind.

Seiji crouches, scoops up the scroll from the ground. "How are you doing, Shuuichi-san?"

Shuuichi's face is pale, Seiji sees, when he stands. One paper charm, crumpled between the knuckles of his right hand. "I've been better. What are you going to do with that?"

"This?" Seiji holds out the closed scroll, feels its weight in his hand. "This should have a few uses I can think of."

"Ah," Shuuichi says, faint. "I suppose I should..." and he gestures vaguely at the ground.

Seiji looks. A scuffed circle. Scraps of paper, torn. The remains of a wooden branch, split in two. 

No, not just a branch. The shape was taller than that. A staff. 

"Oh, clean-up," Seiji says. Shiki could do that, easily enough. But he looks at Shuuichi's face, his lips pressed together, frowning. That's right. Shuuichi wasn't one who would summon them for something like this.

Seiji's gaze moves down. "What happened, Shuuichi-san?"

Shuuichi's hand is still held up, cradled against his chest. His left one.

Seiji takes a step closer.

The gecko on Shuuichi's forehead slinks down, to his jaw. His neck. He breathes out. "The staff," Shuuichi says. "I had been holding it. And after." His brows draw together, frustrated. "I'm not too sure." Shuuichi looks at Seiji's face, then seems to come to a decision.

He drops his hand, unfolds it in front of Seiji. A tacit invitation.

Seiji's eyes trace over the hand. He would have liked to hold it, to test where the pain started, if he could. But that would be ill-advised, without knowing how deep the injuries ran. 

Faint reddish scrapes over the palm. A smear of ink across the joints of the first two fingers. 

Shuuichi's fingers flex once, involuntarily. He hisses.

"Is it your fingers? They may be broken. Or just sprained, if you are lucky," Seiji says.

"Broken?" Shuuichi laughs, cheerlessly. "And with Toriyama's next gathering coming up too." 

"The one in two days time?"

"Yes. You were invited too, then." It's not a question, not the way Shuuichi says it.

"You can't go."

" _Can't?_ " Shuuichi's lips pull back, teeth bared. "Why ever not?" There's a small cut on his lip, a thin red line almost next to the center of the cupid's bow.

Seiji could simply take another step forward. Grab the hand Shuuichi held out, and twist. Shuuichi would scream. 

Broken fingers were painful, Seiji knew.

Seiji tilts his head in, voice quiet. "You know they don't take attendance at those meetings, not officially. What do you suppose is the purpose of those gatherings?"

"Information," Shuuichi says, first. "Isn't it?" His tongue runs over his top lip, in an unconscious motion.

"Availability," Seiji says, draws out the word in an undertone. "What would you say, you suppose, if someone were to offer you an assignment in your state?"

"Refuse it," Shuuichi says. "What sort of quest—?"

"For what reason?"

Shuuichi closes his mouth. Blinks slowly. Eyes brighter, with something like realization. "It's not the done thing, then." 

"Presence at a gathering implies a welcoming for those assignments you would so easily turn down."

"So it doesn't matter, what reason I would have."

"Not always. But few would remember why you turned them down. They will only remember that you refused." 

"I would rather not," Shuuichi starts. Breathes out again. The steam from his breath fogs his glasses slightly, more on the lenses on the right than the left. "That would be why some recuse themselves from gatherings, when injured?"

"You would need that time to recover, yes." 

"And if I don't go, there would be news that I would miss." Shuuichi grimaces. "I don't think you would be the type to bring notes for me, either."

"And if I said I would?" Seiji says, on a whim.

A flat look from Shuuichi. "Then I would be wondering what you were expecting in return."

Seiji laughs, light. "Then you would be left in the dark until the next gathering after that, wouldn't you?"

 

—

 

The boy who once held Shuuichi's hand in his palm, dark hair falling over his ears, his cheek, as he splinted Shuuichi's fingers, now has Shuuichi pressed against the wall, one hand locked over Shuuichi's wrist.

The other, a blade to Shuuichi's throat.

"Matoba," Shuuichi said, barely moving his lips.

"Natori-san." The room is dark. There is only a thin sliver of light over the paper on Matoba's eye, the white of his teeth, as he speaks. "What a surprise."

Shuuichi takes in a breath, then another, shallow as he can. Cold, cold metal. A narrow line of focus.

The fingers wielding it pressed against his collarbone. The others over his wrist. Warm.

The pulse right over his throat is thrumming, thrumming, thrumming. Moves up. Down. Up. Was that his own? Or Matoba's?

"Would you mind letting go?" Shuuichi says, voice low. Up close, the faintest reflection of his own face in Matoba's pupil, a near imperceptible ink stroke over washi paper.

Matoba stares at him. The little light there was slipped away. Only shadows, now. The creaking of the rotting tatami, the whispering paper in Shuuichi's sleeves. 

"My apologies," Matoba says, "for not seeing you behind me." He pulls away.

The coldness leaves Shuuichi's throat.

The blade in Matoba's hand is still in its scabbard. Under Shuuichi's own hand, the coldness is already disappearing. Like it had never touched his skin.

Matoba is still watching him, unmoving from where he had stepped. "You heard the same story here, too? You would fight me," he tilts his head, "over this?"

"Why would you ask?" Shuuichi steps forward. A shot of anger, sparks and charcoal. "Afraid of losing to me?" The paper chain leaps into his hand, links twining over his elbow to wrist. 

Matoba steps back. Black melting into black, a fading picture. 

"You're welcome to try, Natori-san," he says, the voice echoing as he moves further away, and Shuuichi rushes forward to follow.

 

—

 

His skin is prickling all over, the way it had when he had first listened to the caws of a yosuzume flock. Shuuichi narrows his eyes. Steps to the side on his left, to turn on his heel.

Sees him, across the room.

Between the silhouettes of two, three other faces, Matoba is looking, straight at him. The light is brighter in this room, than it had been days ago. His expression unreadable, still. 

Shuuichi resists the urge to speak. Refuses to let his hand drift up, to rub the spot where it had rested, the knuckles pushing gently at the base of his neck.

Matoba's gaze hasn't moved, his uncovered eye seemingly even blacker than usual in his pale face. Like a shaman peering over bones in ash, like he's searching for some sign, some unspoken word, from Shuuichi.

Shuuichi looks away, first.

**Author's Note:**

> Note of interest: [Oracle bone writing was the record of fortune-telling or divination in answer to a prayer or question made to the god by a ruler. The belly side of a tortoise or a piece of animal bone was heated, and the cracks that appeared were read as the answer from the god. ](https://kanjiportraits.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/oracle-bone-writings-at-tokyo-national-museum-and-the-kanji-%E7%8E%8B%E6%97%BA%E7%9A%87%E5%A3%AB%E4%BB%95/)


End file.
